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Rockettes, Rebooted for a New Era

Rockettes rehearsing at Radio City Music Hall. The kick line remains the cornerstone of most Rockette numbers.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

FOR nearly 80 years families have been flocking to Radio City Music Hall to bask in the glory of the Rockettes, whose eye-high kicks have as much to do with the holidays as the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Attending the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” is an exercise in nostalgia. So who in her right mind would mess with such a time-honored tradition?

Someone like Linda Haberman, who realizes that for people outside the dance world — and even to some within it — the Rockettes are akin to dancing vintage stewardesses who wear red, white and green and spread good cheer at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

As the director and choreographer of the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” and the Rockettes, Ms. Haberman knows that shaking up an institution isn’t always a bad thing. For her new number in the coming show, “Humbugged: Rockettes to the Rescue,” the kick line is severed. The high-heels are banished. In their place? Karate kicks, boots and heroism. That’s right: this year the Rockettes are reborn.

“I wanted to show the women’s strength and their athleticism because that’s a side of them that never gets seen by the general public,” she said. Since taking over in 2006 Ms. Haberman has been on a mission to modernize the Rockettes while honoring what they do best: precision technique, in which individual bodies work as one to become a glittering human machine. This holiday season technological wizardry places the dancers inside a video game, transforming the “Christmas Spectacular,” which draws nearly a million viewers during its eight-week run at Radio City Music Hall. (It opens on Friday.) But in a way, none of the technology is as remarkable as how Ms. Haberman has recreated the Rockettes.

“Frankly, we love that she is willing to take chances,” said Melissa Ormond, president of MSG Entertainment, which produces the show. “She’s not satisfied with the status quo. She’s always pushing to be better and better, and I think the show’s a perfect example of that.”

In a relatively short time Ms. Haberman has greatly improved the level of both ”Christmas Spectacular” and the Rockettes. As Ms. Ormond said, in today’s economic climate that’s necessary. “People have to think about where they’re spending their dollar now more than ever,” she said. “That’s another extremely valid reason to keep the show fresh and modern while still trading on the heritage that it has. We’re certainly competing against other live theatricals, but virtually anything is competition now.”

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Rockettes do a precision dance number at Radio City in 1935.Credit
Cosmo-Sileo

As it did last year, Radio City will offer 212 performances of the “Christmas Spectacular,” but there have been cuts in other places. In 2010 touring companies performed versions of the show in six other cities; in addition there was a 19-city arena tour. This year the show is not touring and will be in residence only in Boston, Nashville and Durham, N.C. “We hoped to take the bigger tour back out, but the economy just hasn’t recovered,” Ms. Ormond said.

In New York the show has a new title: “The Rockettes Magical Journey.” The Rockettes are officially front and center, and with that comes ownership. “Of course they’re beautiful, but they are not eye candy,” Ms. Ormond said. “They’re incredibly talented dancers, they’re a sisterhood, they’re a team, they’re glamorous, they’re capable, they’re empowered, they’re confident.”

While Ms. Haberman has refined several numbers in the show, “Rockettes to the Rescue” is groundbreaking both in terms of technology and in propelling the dance group into the 21st century. “Part of me wanted to see how much I could deconstruct the Rockettes and still have them be the Rockettes,” Ms. Haberman said in an interview at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, where the two casts were rehearsing.

In “Rockettes to the Rescue” Ms. Haberman has choreographed a video game in which the Rockettes help a mother and daughter battle their way through four levels of obstacles, leading to the archvillain: the Humbug King. The work incorporates 3-D technology, paving the way for live performance and animation to interact and create the sensation, Ms. Haberman hopes, of total immersion for the audience.

Precision, in other words, has never been so integral. In the studio Ms. Haberman viewed her Rockettes with a critical eye. “I don’t buy five and six,” she said, referring to counts. “You’re in a nice pose with your chin up.”

Rows of sweaty dancers, faces free of makeup, cowered with their arms bent at the elbows and their palms facing down in a frozen moment of shock. “You’re not just holding an arm,” Ms. Haberman said. “You’re fearing for your life.”

With demon speed she charged toward a young dancer in the second row who stumbled backward and screamed. For a split second Ms. Haberman looked pleased that her tactic worked. In rehearsals this spiky-haired woman, whose dance lineage is ballet and Bob Fosse, neither throws out compliments nor suffers dancers prone to lackadaisical marking.

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Linda Haberman, the director and choreographer of the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular,” has been on a mission to modernize the Rockettes.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Nowadays being a Rockette is serious business, which is why “Rockettes to the Rescue” is even more symbolic. It replaces the cute but infantile “Ragdolls” dance, in which the women, transformed into a pack of Raggedy Anns, performed a kick line before leaping into a jump split and then spelling out “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” with blocks.

In place of dolls are Rockettes who jump with power, clench their fists and extend their arms like spears. There are touches of Japanese anime, the ballet world’s Sylvia and even “Xena: Warrior Princess.” Ms. Haberman noted that Gene Kelly’s duet with Jerry Mouse in “Anchors Aweigh” was somewhere in the back of her mind. But what gives the number its power and authority, and what makes it uniquely suited to the Rockettes, is its use of precision technique.

The Rockettes date to 1925 when Russell Markert created the Missouri Rockets in St. Louis. After seeing the Tiller Girls, an English group, he was inspired to invent an American version with dancers who had longer legs, were capable of complicated tap routines and could execute eye-high kicks. Before becoming the Radio City Rockettes in 1934, the group was known as the Roxyettes. When Radio City showed films, which it did through the 1970s, the Rockettes regularly performed live shows between the movies; now just about the only performance opportunity for the dancers is the “Christmas Spectacular.”

In their famous kick line, dancers engage in what is known as linking up — the technique of fastening their arms from behind — and raise their legs to their eyelashes. It remains the cornerstone of most Rockette numbers. (And not to fear: There are still plenty of kick lines in the show.)

Today that sort of choreographic uniformity, where ravishing and military meet, is something of a lost art. Such symmetry can be found in Busby Berkeley’s swirling arrangements of dancers or even in the geometric patterns of marching bands. At Radio City it’s sumptuously preserved in “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” — a Markert classic from 1933 that remains in the show — as well as in newer dances by Ms. Haberman like “Let Christmas Shine.”

But the video-game aspect explores a new kind of precision. As she did in “Shine” — one section starts with a single Rockette and builds to the complete 36 — Ms. Haberman continues her experimentation of pulling the line apart. “Rockettes to the Rescue” begins with two dancers and grows with each level of the game.

As the story goes, a mother is desperate to find the toy she thinks her daughter wants; her daughter meanwhile tells Santa that she needs the right gift for her mother. He whisks them off to the North Pole and gives them a video game to play; in it the Humbugs have stolen all of his Christmas toys.

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Rockettes 3-D

The classic Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall gets revamped, with 3-D effects and karate-kicking dancers.

The mother and daughter — with the help of the Rockettes — work together to battle the Humbugs and, in doing so, receive the real gift: spending time together. “It basically reinforces what I believe the Rockettes are, which is that the sum is bigger than the individual parts,” Ms. Haberman said. “It takes all of them working together.”

The idea to combine 3-D with live performance emanated from Ms. Haberman who, along with her creative team, conducted tests to learn whether the choreography would read through 3-D glasses. (The show does include another 3-D scene, in which Santa arrives on his sleigh.) “Everyone, I think, thought I was a little touched,” she said pressing her index finger to her head. “They still do, some of them.”

Ms. Haberman worked closely with Reel Fx, an animation studio in Dallas and Santa Monica, Calif., to create the story from scratch. Chuck Piel, vice president for business development at Reel Fx, said that he wanted the audience to feel as though it’s living inside a video game. “The choreography is so synced and exact that it appears as if the characters are interacting with the Rockettes,” he said.

Because of the improved technical caliber of her dancers Ms. Haberman has increased the intricacy of the steps. “I think they’re stronger this year,” she said. “I can do little tiny shadings now that were totally not possible, say, five years ago.”

As an assistant choreographer, Karen Keeler, explained, it’s starting to get out that being a Rockette is a serious dance job. “The perception is that we’re changing and amazingly talented technical dancers are now starting to audition,” she said. “Some of the new dancers have extensive backgrounds in serious, professional ballet schools.”

Sierra Ring, a Rockette, said that as the group evolves, more people in the dance world are starting to take note. She uses her boyfriend, Buck Collins, a former member of American Ballet Theater, as a marker of sorts. “Prior to seeing the show, I think his idea of what it was, ‘Oh, yeah, you kick,’ and now he is in love with the show and will compare it to any of the greatest ballets,” she said. “More and more people are seeing us in that new light.”

In breaking away from the quintessential kick line, “Rockettes to the Rescue” also takes precision dancing to new levels; arabesques in particular mark a shift from the usual passé poses. “After a while there are only so many formations and so many ways to do kicks,” Ms. Haberman said. “It just becomes tiresome.”

Ms. Keeler put it another way: “You know what I want? I want the perception of the Rockettes to be what I feel it to be: that it is a dance company. We are a group of women that dance together, and we are certainly a company. I don’t want people to just think that we’re pretty women who can kick. It’s just so much more than that.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2011, on page AR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Rockettes, Rebooted for a New Era. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe